Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to a medical image diagnosis apparatus that displays at a proper display magnification a path including a branch point identical to that of another path in a tubular structure when the paths are displayed, a control method therefor, and a program.
Description of the Related Art
A medical-image display mechanism exists which displays a tubular structure such as a blood vessel and the intestines as a three-dimensional medical image acquired by performing volume rendering by superimposing two-dimensional medical images of X-ray CT or MRI, for example.
Curved Multi Planer Reconstruction (hereinafter, CPR) is a technology for reconstructing multiple planes of a three-dimensional medical image. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0249270 discloses a technology which generates a straightened CPR image acquired by drawing a curved line along a centerline of a tubular structure in a longitudinal direction thereof and converting the curved line to a straight line.
A CPR image may show the entire length of a tubular structure running three-dimensionally and the diameter of a blood vessel within which a treatment is performed using a stent graft on one screen and may therefore be used for examining a place to insert a catheter.
However, the technology disclosed in US 2004/0249270 and conventional technologies have a problem that the size of a CPR image depends on the display area of the CPR image.
For example, FIG. 24 illustrates a screen having a display area 2401a displaying a CPR image showing a path from an origin part to a terminal part D7 of a tubular structure illustrated in FIG. 6 and a display area 2401b displaying a CPR image showing a path from the origin part to a terminal part D3 of the tubular structure. These two paths are identical up to a branch point B3 as illustrated in FIG. 6. However, for clearly showing the shorter path, the CPR image is generated by using the length of the longer side of the display area 2401. As a result, the paths are difficult to be compared though they are identical.